Certain professorships are difficult to fill with qualified applicants, depending on the subject. Currently, the procedure is that the decentralised HR department prepares the job advertisement and forwards it to HR Services. HR services sometimes receive advice from the supervisor of the post or from the decentralised HR department on where the post should be advertised. Most of the time, HR Services must decide through which channels the job should be published. Since these publications, are expensive, it would be helpful to better understand which channels the professors use for job search.

In order to answer the research question, a qualitative data analysis was carried out using eleven semi-structured zoom interviews and one written interview. The interviews involved professors, associate professors, postdocs, representatives of the dean's office and the decentralised HR as well as professional associations to gain as many perspectives as possible. Subsequently, the interviews were analysed using MAXQDA software so that appropriate conclusions could be drawn and recommendations for action made.

The findings revealed that the main channels used by experts to find jobs are their own network, professional associations and the university website. Another interesting finding was that the older professors disregard social media in their job search, whereas it is very important for senior postdocs or young professors. When it comes to informal networking, all interview participants agreed that it is of great importance to them in their job search. Not as a guarantee to get a job by contacts, this is not possible due to the transparent and strict appointment procedures. But to be informed about an advertised job and to get background information. Based on the mentioned channels from the interviews, a list of channels was created, which were mentioned by the interview participants for job search. Furthermore, it was suggested to the client to cooperate more with the professional associations. In this way, the target group could be specifically addressed according to the subject area. The benefit for the client is that they have a specific list of channels mentioned by the experts as well as contacts to professional associations which could be deepened if the client is interested.